S. T. Joshi

S. T. Joshi has edited several collections of Mencken’s writings, including H. L. Mencken on American Literature, Mencken’s America, and Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings. He is also an authority on literature of the supernatural and author of The Weird Tale, Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, and other critical and biographical studies.

H. L. Mencken’s reputation as a journalist and cultural critic of the twentieth century has endured well into the twenty-first. His early contributions as a writer, however, are not very well known. He began his journalistic career as early as 1899 and in 1910 cofounded the Baltimore Evening Sun.

“This is the latest of Joshi’s important contributions to the broadening of Mencken’s general audience, at a time when the Sage of Baltimore’s star is once again on the rise. Thanks to collections like this, he is reclaiming his position as America’s greatest journalist and (next only to his idol Twain) its greatest humorist and satirist.”

Clarence Darrow, son of a village undertaker and coffinmaker, rose to become one of America's greatest attorneys—and surely its most famous. The Ohio native gained renown for his central role in momentous trials, including his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb and his defense of Darwinian principles in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.”

“Darrow’s Closing Arguments are, even today, clear, forceful and prescient. What a treasure. Entertaining and educational. A timely reminder that the more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Long famous as a political, social, and cultural gadfly, journalist and essayist H. L. Mencken was unafraid to speak his mind on controversial topics and to express his views in a deliberately provocative manner. Mencken was prolific; much of his best work lies buried in the newspapers and magazines in which it originally appeared.

H. L. Mencken was one of the leading literary, social, and cultural critics of the 1910s, '20s, and '30s. However, very few of his literary reviews have been reprinted in any form prior to their appearance in this volume. H. L. Mencken on American Literature presents a comprehensive selection of Mencken's reviews of the leading American writers of his time.

In Lord of a Visible World, the editors have amassed and arranged the letters of this prolific writer into the story of his life. The volume traces Lovecraft's upbringing in Providence, Rhode Island, his involvement with the pulp magazine Weird Tales, his short-lived marriage, and his later status as the preeminent man of letters in his field. In addition to conveying the candid details of his life, the volume also traces the evolution of his wide-ranging opinions.